Phobos: Mayan Fear Read Online Free PDF Page A

physique moving in defiance of the laws of physics. She experiences a quantum second of weightlessness before gravity’s unleashed forces take over, simultaneously fragmenting and dispersing every cell in her body.

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If we go on the way we are, we may not get through the next century at all. When there is a clear danger in the headlights, common sense says hit the brakes, but scientists often want to keep the foot hard down on the accelerator pedal.
—MARVIN MINSKY, PHD

    MANALAPAN, FLORIDA
    MAY 1, 2047

    T he palatial mansion of Lilith Mabus, widow of the late billionaire Lucien Mabus, stretches along a private ocean lot in Manalapan, a small island town just north of Boynton Beach, Florida. The thirty-one room, three-story home features a seaside swimming pool complete with waterfall and swim-up bar, two tennis courts, a fitness center, a 1,200-square-foot grand salon illuminated by a six-thousand-pound crystal chandelier imported from a nineteenth-century French chateau, an observatory dome, and an eight-car garage, its floors paved in Saturnia marble. Each of the six bedroom suites has its own balcony facing the Atlantic, the mansion’s windows self-cleaning, made with a thin metal oxide coating electrified to help rainwater to wash away loose particles. A small NiCE electrical station is located on the northern grounds, harnessing power from the sun and wind.
    The newest addition to the oceanside luxury home is a configuration of satellite dishes situated in a concrete bunker on the south lawn. The receivers allow Lilith Mabus and her intel team to pirate a network of Pentagon surveillance satellites from the convenience of her home office, though “officially” they merely provide MTI’s CEO the means of communicating with a fleet of space planes owned and operated by her subsidiary company, Project H.O.P.E.

    The origins of America’s space program can be traced back to the first Cold War, when the conflicting ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union blossomed into a full-fledged race into space. President John F. Kennedy raised the bar in 1961 by setting a goal to land an American astronaut safely on the moon—a goal that was accomplished on July 20, 1969.
    For the four decades that followed, space exploration floundered.
    Part of the problem was a lack of clearly defined goals, exacerbated by President Nixon’s decision to hinge NASA’s future on the space shuttle—a nonexploratory Earth-orbiting vehicle hampered with design flaws that would lead to the fatal Challenger and Columbia disasters. With the rest of the outdated fleet reserved for “shuttle duty” to and from the International Space Station (yet another Earth-orbiting tortoise), the public’s interest in the space program waned.
    What NASA officials never knew was that all lunar missions had been permanently scrubbed as part of a top-secret directive that dated back to the Lyndon Johnson era. It was not until 2029 that a private company would break the military industrial complex’s stranglehold on space exploration, the revolt led by a billionaire’s son hell-bent on his own self destruction.
    Lucien Mabus was born with a platinum spoon in his mouth. The only child of defense contractor Peter Mabus and his late wife, Carolyn, Lucien was raised by private tutors and athletic trainers for much of his childhood while his father mounted a political campaign to challenge the incumbent President Ennis Chaney for the White House. Bitter over losing the 2016 election, Mabus sought other avenues to rid the country of its leader. He was eventually “sanctioned” by the Gabriel twins’ bodyguards after hiring an assassin to kill Jacob and Immanuel.
    In shock over his father’s murder, Lucien Mabus spent what remained of his teen years under the watchful eye of an uncle, who preferred to keep his defiant nephew confined to rehab centers rather than deal with the boy’s ongoing drug and alcohol addictions. Lucien celebrated his